The Equality Act 2010 is the law that protects you from discrimination and gives you the right to challenge it.
The Act makes it unlawful to discriminate against someone on the grounds of any of these characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion/belief, sex (gender) and sexual orientation.
These are often referred to as protected characteristics.
Are mental health and neurodivergence covered under the Act?
The Equality Act says you have a disability if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial, adverse, and long-term effect on your ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.
In this way the definition of disability is broader than the usual way you might use it and neurodivergent individuals and those with mental health challenges are likely to meet the legal definition if they can show that it:
- has more than a small effect on everyday life.
- makes things more difficult for them.
- has lasted at least 12 months, is likely to last 12 months, or that it is likely to recur.
Types of Discrimination:
- Direct
- Indirect
- Harassment
- Victimisation
Direct discrimination
This occurs where a person is treated differently because he/she has protected characteristics (e.g. gender, race or sex).
Direct discrimination may even occur by association (where a person is treated differently because he/she is associated with a person who has a protected characteristic) or by perception (because a person appears to have a protected characteristic he/she is treated differently).
Direct discrimination may be failing to promote a person, dismissing them, or not employing them in the first place because of their protected characteristic.
Indirect discrimination
This form of discrimination is not as obvious and can be unintentional. Indirect discrimination occurs when an organisation has a policy, requirement or practice that appears to apply to all, but its effect in practice disadvantages a particular group of people with a protected characteristic.
Harassment
This occurs where the conduct or behaviour is unwanted and relates to one or more of the protected characteristics. The conduct must have the effect or purpose of violating a person’s dignity or creating a hostile, intimidating, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for the person receiving it. Harassment can include name calling, threats, jokes, banter, being excluded, insults, and unwanted physical contact.
Victimisation
Victimisation happens when a person is treated differently because he/she has made an allegation of or supported a complaint of discrimination. It can even be where the person has given evidence relating to a complaint of discrimination, or raised a grievance concerning discrimination.
Making Reasonable Adjustments
There is a duty on an employer to make reasonable adjustments where an employee is deemed to have a disability in situations where the knowledge of the disability has been brought to the attention of the employer or where it is reasonable to assume the employer should have known of the disability.
If the disability affects the work of the person, for example leads to lower performance or poor timekeeping, the employer should consider reasonable adjustments after discussion with the employee or obtaining a medical report